Various types of electronic devices, such as personal computers, mobile telephones, printers, multifunction peripheral and household electrical appliances, include hardware such as a central processing unit (CPU), a memory and the like, and software that executed by the CPU. Hardware and software in these electronic devices suffer a wide range of malfunctions due to various causes during various processes, such as operations processing, communications processing, and standby processing. For example, when there is a software design malfunction in the electronic device, it would bring the electronic problems such as that the electronic device might function in a way not intended by the developer, or it might not function at all. When the electronic device suffers a fatal malfunction such as these, the malfunction is analyzed and its cause is identified by the developer while the problem is caused in the development step, or by the manufacturer while in the manufacturing step, or by the maintainer while it is already on sale. Whoever analyzes the malfunction identifies its cause based on various types of information.
As a related technology, when an error occurs while executing an application, an LCD displays an error message screen over an application screen. In this related technology, when a user presses a ‘Close’ button displayed on the error message screen, image data including the error message screen and an application screen below this error message screen are stored as error information in the memory. Based on an output command of the error information, the LCD displays the error information, and thereby supplies information required for analyzing the malfunction to the person who is analyzing the malfunction.